In the last decade or so, the Venice International Film Festival, now in its 76th year, has become the crucial first stopping point for big movies aiming at awards glory. What’s been brought to the Lido—the beachy island just east of Venice’s main tangle of canals and narrow streets—in those years has been a rich panoply of prestige film.
Unlike Cannes, with its long lines and charmingly imperious staff, Venice’s festival has a laid-back, decidedly Italian vibe. Screenings don’t always start on time; press queues are loose and unstressful; premieres are splashy, but also maybe a little self-consciously silly. Movie stars and those handling them seem to appreciate that chill Italian energy. And so they bring their biggest stuff here first, before the breathless altitude of Telluride and the cramped gridlock of Toronto. It’s a beautiful place to set the fall movie season out on its journey. So beautiful, in fact, that Vanity Fair dispatched photographer Greg Williams to the city of bridges to capture all that elegant, excited glamour. Here’s what he saw.
For top photo: Arriving at premieres by boat isn’t just fashionable, it’s practical. Of course, stars like Nicholas Hoult (whose next film, True History of the Kelly Gang, will premiere in Toronto this year), don’t travel on the slow-chugging vaporetto (water bus) like the badge-wearing hoi polloi on their way to press screenings. No, for the glitterati it’s all about private taxis, most of them beautiful wood-sided motorboats. They’ll take you to the Sala Grande for a film, or to one of the luxe hotels (the Excelsior on the Lido, the Aman on the main island) that have exclusive boat entrances. It’s glamorous enough to be gliding across the lagoon with the spires of Venice behind you—to be doing it on a private vessel? Fantastico.
Ruth Negga, who features in director James Gray’s competition entry Ad Astra, is no stranger to the glamour of European film festivals. In 2016, her film Loving debuted at Cannes, setting her on the course to an Academy Award nomination for best actress. She’d be more of a supporting contender for Ad Astra, which is mostly the Brad Pitt show. Still, Negga makes a commanding impression in the film, just as she does on any red carpet or, ahem, Vanity Fair photo shoot.
Nicholas Hoult has just finished making a splash in this photo, just as he did last year as a cast member in The Favourite, a smash hit that won Hoult’s co-star Olivia Colman the Volpi Cup for best actress. (On her way to a surprise Oscar win.) Increasingly, the Venice awards serve as a solid predictive tool for divining what might get nominated—or outright win—at the Academy Awards. Last year, Colman made the Volip to Oscar conversion. In 2017, The Shape of Water took both the Golden Lion and the Academy Award for best picture. And in 2016, Hoult’s Favourite co-star Emma Stone rode Venice buzz to the Dolby stage for La La Land.
Rising star Jack O’Connell has done lots of festivals. He’s been to Berlin, Toronto, Cannes, Edinburgh, and others. But this is the first time he’s been the co-lead of a Venice film, the grim biopic Seberg, about the actress and activist Jean Seberg, who was targeted by the F.B.I. for her involvement with the Black Panthers. Far from the party-ready guy you see pictured here, O’Connell’s character in the film is a straitlaced, principled federal agent who begins to question the moral value of his mission. After all the intensity, we’re glad he was able to unwind a bit here in Italy.
The Venice film festival exists to honor the artform of cinema, of course, but it’s also a celebration of Italy, of its people, its food, its fashion. To that end, you see tasteful branding throughout the festival area: a Ferrari logo here, an elaborate Campari stand there. (Indeed, Campari spritzes are second only to Aperol spritzes as the most ubiquitous quaff in Venice.) And then you have Cate Blanchett—a 2007 Volpi Cup winner for sorta playing Bob Dylan in I’m Not There—at the festival this year as an ambassador for Armani, the fashion and lifestyle brand that is one of the great prides of Europe’s beautiful boot. Blanchett may not be a native Italian, but she wears an Armani suit like one.
Joaquin Phoenix’s gentle smile, as he boats to a premiere with his beloved, Rooney Mara, is nothing compared to the terrifying rictus he sports in the competition film Joker. Undoubtedly the buzziest film at the festival, Todd Phillips’s harrowing super-villain origin story took the festival by storm on Saturday, with many placing Phoenix in lead position for best actor. Reviews and reactions weren’t out yet when V.F. snapped this picture, so that’s a smile of simple, pure excitement right there. It’s nice to see an actor known for such dark roles having a little fun. And, y’know, not killing various residents of Gotham City.
Scarlett Johansson has won a Tony, a BAFTA, and a variety of other awards, but she’s never been nominated for an Oscar. That seems likely to change this year due to her strong work in Netflix’s Marriage Story, a bleary and beautiful film from Noah Baumbach in which Johansson plays one half of a couple trying, and failing, to separate as amicably as possible. Johansson’s already received some of the best reviews of her career for the film, which is also playing Telluride, Toronto, and New York, more buzzy festivals where Johansson’s awards profile is sure to rise even further. Netflix firmly broke through the Academy Awards barrier last year with Roma, so look to Marriage Story—and its radiant star—to maybe continue that trend.
With all eyes—and cameras—on the red carpet outside the Sala Grande each evening, one must make sure one looks one’s best when making one’s way to a premiere. And so the glam process, an often hours-long ritual that takes up a huge time slot in any actor’s schedule at the festival—one publicists and journalists have to maneuver around. “She has a hard out for glam at four” is a phrase many journalists will hear more than once in Venice when trying to arrange interviews with talent. Here, Zazie Beetz gets glammed for the premiere of Joker, one her two films at the festival this year. She’s also got Seberg, making Beetz one of the undisputed queens of Venice 2019.
One of the more seismic developments at film festivals in recent years is that they now don't just screen films. No, with television such a dominant medium these days, many festivals like Venice have decided to selectively screen some TV shows, too. Though, the series typically have to be pretty auteur-driven, like Jane Campion's Top of the Lake, which screened at Cannes, or Italian superstar director Paolo Sorrentino's The New Pope, a second-season continuation of the HBO series The Young Pope that debuted two episodes on the Lido. Jude Law returns to the series, playing perhaps the world's sexiest Catholic. Yes, it's TV, but there's something decidedly cinematic—and, of course, Italian—about The New Pope, so it fit in just fine here at one of filmdom's grandest temples.
Probably the most exciting thing about an international film festival like Venice is seeing some of the most unpredictable, and yet consistently working, auteurs unveil their latest work. Olivier Assayas, in which Edgar Ramirez stars, surprised everyone at Venice this year with a Cuban spy drama that contained thriller elements. It's the fascinating director's latest genre experiment—consider him the French Steven Soderbergh. It's quite a surprise to see the director of recent rambling, talkative movies like Clouds of Sils Maria and Non-Fiction stage a sequence involving jet fighters shooting down planes. Somehow, he pulls it off.
A true renaissance man, Joel Edgerton has gone from exciting new actor to exciting new director and screenwriter. He plays Falstaff in Netflix's The King, but he also adapted the script from several of Shakespeare's plays, along with the film's director David Michôd. It's a wordy, high-language script (not quite Elizabethan English, but not modern vernacular either) that Edgerton delivers with aplomb. As does celebrity scion Lily Rose Depp, playing the only person in the movie who really puts King Henry in his place. She had a little help from Edgerton's script, of course.
Ben Mendelsohn broke into the American consciousness with David Michôd's Animal Kingdom, alongside Joel Edgerton. Now he's joined the boys from Oz again with Netflix's The King. Mendelsohn isn't in much of the film, but he still makes an impression—as he always does. Imposing as he often is on screen, in person Mendelsohn projects a casual, fun-loving air. He's just a humble guy from Australia—albeit one who gets to stay at Venice's fabulous Belmond Hotel Cipriani while in Italy for a film festival.
